A certain amount of catharsis can accompany goals scored the nearer the clock ticks to the 90-minute mark. The first installment of the Melbourne derby this season was a tightly fought affair, the deadlock broken only in the 89th minute as Yukari Kinga met Steph Catley’s cross to cannon the ball into Casey Dumont’s net. The sucker punch was perhaps fair reward for the sky blue side of Melbourne, the narrowness of the scoreline perhaps a fair reflection of the contest.
Fast forward to Saturday, and this time it was Brisbane Roar’s turn to take a late win, with Hayley Raso finishing clinically for a form- and confidence-confirming goal against Adelaide to make up ground for points dropped earlier this season. Again, catharsis descends.
But compare and contrast with the similarly timed match-turning moment in Perth a day earlier as Kim Carroll leapt to meet Leticia McKenna’s corner in the 90th minute, the equaliser her first goal for the club and snare her club’s first point of the season.
The defender and her club’s moment of catharsis, this time came courtesy of the ball squirming over the goal line, beyond the scrabble of the penalty box rabble. The effusive celebrations from the West Australians were tinged with relief given the urgent need for something, anything, so that the Glory might have something to show for their efforts this season, as they continue to adjust to life in the post-Kerr era. There’s something slightly symbolic in the ball not hitting the back of the net, instead tantalisingly squirming over the goal line just far enough to secure Perth the point.
For Perth Glory, it’s not their first notable draw with Canberra. Who can forget that eye-catching eight-goal stalemate early last season? But the fact that this season the spoils have been shared in a markedly more quotidian scoreline than last season suggests a continuation of wider trends in the W-League.
At just over a third of the way into the 2019-20 campaign, W-League teams have been more averse to scoring goals than in seasons gone by.
Looking at the past few W-League seasons cumulatively, the PFA’s end of season W-League reports have shown a gradual downward trend of goals scored per game. In the 2016-17 W-League season, there were an average of 3.49 goals scored per game, which dipped slightly to 3.43 in 2017-18 and further to 3.22 in 2018-19. After five rounds of the 2019-20 edition, we’re on 2.75 goals per game.
Comparing this point in this season to the fifth round of seasons gone by, the dip is even more marked. In 2015-16 - which happened to be Melbourne City’s inaugural W-League campaign - the average number of goals scored per game at this stage was 2.9, the lowest until now. By round five in the 2016-17 season, the W-League had seen an average of 2.95 goals scored per game. The same juncture of the 2017-18 season saw an average of 3.46 goals scored a game, and last season 3.31.
With the exception of Brisbane Roar’s initial flurry against Adelaide this weekend, and Remy Siemsen’s early brace for Sydney FC against Melbourne Victory in round one, no game to date has seemed likely to blow out. Three-nil has been the most comprehensive victory so far, yet by this stage last season Perth Glory had demolished City 5-2. In part this is due to some stellar goalkeeping and defensive moments. But it is also a curious response to the closeness of last season’s final standings, with goal difference the factor keeping teams out of the playoffs.
One of the questions coming into this season was how Melbourne City would respond to missing out on the playoffs, for the first time, by this metric. Avoiding early blowouts has been one such approach, as they’ve consistently, yet conservatively, clawed their way to this season’s summit via an almost exclusive set of wins by a single-goal margin. The exception to this rule, of course, is their opening day one-all draw with Newcastle Jets. Just enough is being done to acquire the necessary points - no more, no less.
This is echoed in the table’s lower half. It’s worth noting that Adelaide United mirror the fortunes of City in that they are bottom of the table by a single point, having lost each game by a single goal.
As this W-League season moves from its early days stage and its patterns become established, the margins of error and victory are narrowing - and the cathartic potential in games which of late hinge on late finishes, ever brewing.
